Dear Liz: My mother passed away two years ago. She left a small mountain of paperwork which my brother, sister and I have finally started to sort through. Among the surprises that we have found is a receipt from a bank for the purchase of $4,500 of U.S. government savings bonds. The date of purchase is one month after the birth of her grandson in March 1992. We suspect that the bond was intended as a gift for the grandson. Is there a way to track down these bonds? Would a receipt from a bank be sufficient to satisfy the Treasury that the bond purchases were valid?
Answer: Savings bonds purchased in 1992 would have already matured and are no longer paying interest. If your mom didn’t cash in these bonds, you may be able to find them through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Treasury Hunt tool. You can find it at https://www.treasurydirect.
Refering to the 80 year old couple who asked about a life insurance loan on 8/24. I have a question: Why do they need a life insurance policy at all? It appears that there is sufficient income for the surviving spouse, and no children are mentioned. At 80 they need to take some trips while they still can; my wife and I (87 & 89) have finally stopped traveling because age is catching up with us. I think they should see a financial professional with the following plan in mind: Cash out the insurance policy take your trip and put the rest in a high yielding stock such as a REIT or a midstream company.
Regarding tracking down lost savings bonds, I got a response in 2022 from Treasury that the matured, no-longer-receiving-interest bond(s) under my dad’s SSN were gift(s) my now-deceased dad bought for someone else, and they couldn’t tell me for whom. I tried the Treasury Hunt again after seeing this article, and there are still unredeemed bonds that my dad had purchased. It’s a shame there isn’t a way to tell the recipients that they are sitting on money that is no longer earning interest, but I guess the government isn’t going to look hard for those people. I’ll ask my niece and nephew again if they turned in a snail mail form for lost savings bonds (their mom’s house was burglarized and all their savings bonds were lost then), but I kind of doubt Treasury will do much for them.